


Embodiment

by Shadaras



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Creepy Sex Dreams, Dissociation, Gen, Identity Issues, Panic Attacks, Past Torture, Star Trek needs mental health care, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 18:48:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13596153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/pseuds/Shadaras
Summary: Ash Tyler needs therapy, and to settle himself in his body.(post 1.14: The War Without, The War Within)





	Embodiment

**Author's Note:**

> All tense shifts in this story are entirely intentional and have narrative meaning.

His body is (not) his own.

Ash (not Voq, that is only an echo, only—) stares at his hands and slowly, deliberately, closes his fingers (that are too short, too thin). The tracker placed on his wrist (they do not trust him) shifts against his skin, an unfamiliar weight. (He could destroy it. It would be the work of a moment. They would know, but if he timed it right, he could—)

Across the room from him, Counselor Singh coughed delicately. “Ash?”

“Yes?” Ash looked up from his hands. Counselor Singh had the same expression of polite concern he’d had ever since the session started. It was probably meant to be reassuring. Ash supposed that if he could be reassured, it might even work.

“I need you to finish answering these questions to establish a baseline psychological state.”

Ash breathed in and out slowly. He’d heard those words a dozen times since entering the room. “I understand, Counselor. Could you repeat the most recent question?”

“Please describe your sleeping patterns over the last month.”

He swallowed, told himself that it didn’t matter if his voice broke, and almost believed himself. The tracker on his wrist pressed against his side as he talked, the only hard edge near his body. “I’ve been having nightmares since—since being tortured. Transformed.” He clenched his jaw and fixed his eyes on the slowly swirling nebula holo behind the counselor’s turban. “I— the last month—”

“Take your time,” Counselor Singh murmured. His fingers fluttered against the datapad he held, obviously entering notes on Ash’s reactions.

Jerkily, he wiped tears from his eyes and spat out, “I have been living a nightmare, Counselor. I don’t know if my dreams are any better than my waking life.”

In his nightmares, he doesn’t say, he is having sex with L’Rell, and he’s enjoying it. It’s pleasurable. Her hands trace delicate lines over his skin, and he digs his nails into her waist and his teeth into her throat and listen to her moans with his ears and skin both. His teeth are sharp, and he tastes her blood and it excites him, and he ruts against her and it’s the most wonderful sensation he can imagine.

And then the moans of pleasure turn to gasps of pain, and it’s not L’Rell who’s under him, it’s Michael, and those Klingon hands and Klingon teeth that arouse L’Rell destroy Michael’s body, until he’s breaking her under him and fucking her to death and he wakes up with tears on his face and his cock achingly hard.

Ash breathes in and out, slowly, carefully, until he could say, “The nightmares are different now that I have all the memories of what was done to me.”

Counselor Singh’s fingers paused, and his eyes met Ash’s, something that Ash would almost be thankful for (he is not afraid) if he didn’t have a very good guess as to what Singh was going to ask him. In the pause before Counselor Singh spoke, he could feel every beat of his heart, and the way his stomach twisted, trying to escape him, or maybe just trying to go back to the stomach it had once been before—

“I am sorry I need to ask this,” Counselor Singh said, and the thing was, Ash was pretty sure he actually was sorry. He’d put his datapad down and his eyes were drawn in a way that Ash was intimately familiar with from how he looked in the mirror every morning. “Whose memories do you have?”

“Mine,” he answers automatically, and—

That isn’t wrong, it has never been wrong. He leans over, tucks his arms tight to his chest, and swallows. The room’s light is too much, and the way he knows Counselor Singh has to be looking at him (a failure, a mockery; he had so many opportunities and did _nothing_ with them) is a weight pressing him further and further into the chair, into the floor, and—

“My name is Lieutenant Ash Tyler,” he ground out, the most automatic training of Starfleet overriding his panic. “My name. Is Lieutenant. Ash. Tyler.”

The nausea doesn’t recede.

He can feel his fingernails biting into his arms, and he doesn’t bleed. They had cut his nails while he was insensible to keep him from hurting anyone, including himself. Otherwise—

He doesn’t know what he would do otherwise.

“My name is Lieutenant Ash Tyler, and I was born in Issaquah, Washington, on Earth. My mother taught elementary school. They wouldn’t let me be in her class because it would be too distracting for both of us. She taught me how to garden.” Ash opened his eyes to stare at the intricate patterns of Counselor Singh’s rugs. “I have— I have Voq’s memories. They are mine, because I have them, but I did not—”

He closed his eyes again, swallowed against the nausea.

A rustle, footsteps, and something set beside him. Counselor Singh says, “Just in case.”

Ash nods his thanks.

He did not wrap his hands around Michael’s throat. He did not watch T’Kuvma die. He did not—

Ash grabs blindly, pulls the bin in front of his face, and convulses. Almost nothing comes out, bile and a pained choke and nothing more. He hasn’t eaten well lately. It keeps coming up, or being unsatisfying, or being too satisfying in the wrong ways. His stomach twists again, and Ash coughs, and keeps coughing until he’s just lying there, hands loose on the bin and abdomen sore but still.

“I did not kill Doctor Culber, though it was my hands that snapped his neck.”

He doesn’t recognise his voice, hollow and hoarse.

He does recognise the way Counselor Singh talks, the gentleness and quietude. “I do not think you did either, Ash. It is good that you recognise that.”

Ash lifted his head, just enough to give Singh a look at his eyes, at the hair dangling sweaty before his eyes. “Can— can we be done for the day?” he asks. He recognises his own voice this time. That’s. That’s better.

Counselor Singh looks at him, then at his notes, and smiles softly. “I think that’s more than enough for today, Ash. You are welcome to take as much time as you wish before leaving this room.”

“Thank you.” Ash pushed himself upright, rubbed his face with his hands (that are human-soft and that is good, that is right, that is how they should be). “Do you have tea?”

“Of course.” Singh stood and moved over to a little replicator alcove in the wall. “Do you have a flavor preference?”

Ash shook his head. “No caffeine, please.”

Singh hummed, and pressed a selection into the replicator. A moment later, a bright clean smell, ginger and lemon, reached his nose. Ash looked up, grateful, as Singh placed a teacup on the table in front of him. “Again,” he said, body soft and nonthreatening underneath his robes, “take your time.”

The teacup warmed his hands, and Ash lifted it to his nose to let its scent permeate him. “I appreciate it,” he said, closing his eyes and letting the tea overtake his world for now. “Truly, I do.”

Counselor Singh hummed acknowledgement and retreated to his desk, footsteps quiet against the rug.

Slowly, painstakingly, focusing on the scent and taste and warmth, Ash Tyler—no longer Lieutenant—drank his tea and tried to find himself at peace in the world.

And, for the length of a cup of tea, it almost mostly worked.


End file.
